years to develop the curriculum, to go
through the rigors of investing and
developing a testing protocol that was
unbiased and there's a whole methodology
associatedwith doing this, as well as it cost a
lot of money. So, that was one important
thing we did – establish professional best
practices. Since 2008, a lot of our members
have become accredited green roof
professionals. We have over 700 accredited
green roof professionals and more than
1,000 individual members who are not yet
accredited. All told, we have about 2,000
individuals. On the corporate side, we have
a wide range of companies that are
members. They range from multi-national
corporations like Firestone, GAF, and Sika
Sarnafil—the big roofing companies, to
green roof dedicated companies that
manufacture, design and build green roofs
such as Columbia Green, Sempergreen,
Xero Flor, and Rooflite to name a few. We
also have nurseries that are members and
who grow green roof and wall plants. If you
look at our membership page, you'll see
there's a wide range of different companies,
because green roofs and walls involve a lot
of different inputs.
BUSINESS WORLD:
How many
corporatemembers do youhave?
PECK:
Over 160, which you can find in
our onlineGreenPages:
Green Roof andWall Industry Directory –
BUSINESSWORLD:
OK, so it's much
heavier on the individual side.
PECK:
In terms of numbers of members,
yes.
BUSINESS WORLD:
Are there any
other organizations, either in Canada, or
elsewhere in North America, that are doing
similar kinds of work? Do you compete
with anybody?Do youworkwith anybody?
PECK:
We a r e ve r y much i nt o
partnerships, so we work with a lot of
di fferent organizations , where our
membership extensively overlaps with their
membership. We work, for example, with
the American Society of Landscape
Architects. Collaboratively, we work with
the U.S. Green Building Council and the
Living Building Challenge. We've done
work with them. We also work also with
August-September 2014
| BusinessWorld | 41
